SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.
[Under this heading we notice such Books of the week as have not been reserved for review in other forms.1 Franciscan Essays. By Paul Sabatier and others. (University Press, Aberdeen.) — A little collection of essays by various hands upon Franciscan lore will please the modern devotees of St. Francis. The first is in French, by Paul Sabatier. It deals with the "originality" of the saint. In what did it consist P N. Sabatier does not exactly tells us—no doubt it cannot be told—but he suggests that St. Francis was a Modernist. His whole preoccupa- tion was the imitation of Christ, but not, in M. Sabatier'm mind, the Christ of the Gospel. He identified Jesus, so we are told, as Paul identified Him, with the "new Adam"—in other words with his own best self. In so doing he did not reject but he trans- formed Catholicism for himself and his disciples. M. Sabatier quotes a striking passage from Cardinal Newman's writings as illustrative of the theological attitude of St. Francis. He does not toll us from which of Newman's works it comes : "La conscience not en nous in vicaire aborigine du Christ, prophet° dans ses informations, monarque dans see dficrets, prAtre dans see bfinodictions et see anathbmes ; et si jamais le sacerdoce eternel devait comer dans touts l'gglise, dans in conscience demeurerait in Principe sacerdotal at it conserverait le sceptre."
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